


aeroplanes in my belly

by sternenrotz



Series: broken hearts hurt but they make us strong (queer horror verse) [19]
Category: The Horrors (Band)
Genre: Agender Character, Drinking, Everything is awful, Feelings, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Interviews, Japan, Nonbinary Character, Other, Self-Esteem Issues, Trans Female Character, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 08:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6044997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternenrotz/pseuds/sternenrotz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faris and Dilys go to Japan for promo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	aeroplanes in my belly

**Author's Note:**

> titled after "Flugzeuge im Bauch" by Herbert Groenemeyer.
> 
> set in spring of 2014, parallel to that time Faris and Rhys went to Japan in real life: ([x](http://hrrrs.tumblr.com/tagged/japan)) as always, Faris identifies as bi ace and agender, they/them , and Rhys is a trans girl and her chosen name is Dilys. (Josh's gender is too complicated to label but ey uses Spivak pronouns and only gets a small mention.)
> 
> also, the bar they go to is this place: ([x](http://www.tworooms.jp/en/))

They spend the day wandering around Tokyo to avoid the jet lag, since neither of them can sleep on planes. Dilys snaps photos with her phone and Faris brought their old polaroid camera, and they drop in and out of underground and vintage clothing shops over the morning. For lunch, they stop at a quaint little café hidden in a backstreet of Shibuya, before they check in at the hotel and drop off their bags. The rest of the day, they explore the city some more, before they finally eat dinner at a ramen bar tucked inside a winding alleyway.

Now it’s late, and the excitement from being in a different country still hasn’t worn off of Dilys, and contagious the way she is, Faris ends up too buzzed to sleep as well. They’re at a posh rooftop bar with dark wicker sofas and white upholsteries, sat by the edge of the balcony with the Shinjuku skyline sprawled in front of them. The skyscrapers illuminate the bar and give everything a gentle glow, much more than the tealight that flickers in the milky glass lantern on their table.

“We should have a toast.”

Dilys is tipsy already, off the sake shots they both downed and the half-finished cocktail in her one hand. Faris hasn’t even touched their grapefruit Mojito yet. Their face is already too hot when they snap out of their unfocus, but still, when Dilys raises her glass, they meet it with their own. The rims clang together with a shambling sound, and they both laugh.

Faris quickly realises that Dilys expects them to start the toast. “This is to Tokyo,” they say.

“To us,” Dilys says back, “And to the band. Album number four.”

Once again, the laughter comes naturally when they pull back and sip their drinks. The drinks here are prepared with fresh fruit, according to Dilys and the bilingual menus, and the bittersweet grapefruit harmonises with the rum when Faris downs a big gulp. Maybe a little too much rum in there, but that’s by far not the only reason a cringe suddenly rises up their back.

“Lys,” they whisper, and the nickname feels strange slipping past their lips.

Dilys quirks a brow in confusion.

“We’re being watched. Don’t look now, but…”

In spite of their words, she sneaks a glance over to the table behind her anyway. “Oh,” she says, “Oh.”

To be fair, the two of them do stick out like a sore thumb. Almost everyone at this bar is a westerner, but they’re all men in suits on business trips who speak in American accents. Faris can’t make out what the one they just made eye contact with is saying to his friend now, but after years of getting called names in the locker room as a teen, they can make a good guess.

Dilys whispers, “Do you think it’s because of me?”

Faris shakes their head. “Don’t think so.”

Dilys is passable. They hate to use that word, but Faris is sure the suits aren’t staring because they’re seeing a straight girl.

“I just really hate when people look at me,” Faris says next, and they hope the explanation suffices.

They won’t go into detail if it’s going to ruin her mood, but they adjust how they sit, legs uncrossed, and how they hold the glass by its stem.

Dilys mirrors them and scoots to sit up straighter in her chair, and her hand tugs her skirt into place just as soon. Legs folded Indian style, she sips her drink again and gazes out at the glittering skyscrapers, and maybe Faris should do the same. At the very least, they can’t think of anything else to do.

Maybe if Josh was here with them, because the way ey conducts emself invites the stares from conservative old men more than anything Faris could possibly do, but ey also has the attitude and the confidence they lack. Josh would stare back until eir opponents looked away in embarrassment, or maybe make a show of kissing everyone at the table to make them really uncomfortable… On second thought, Faris is glad they’re not here with Josh. Still, they chuckle into their drink when they finally go for that second sip.

Dilys’ eyes flicker back to them. “Hey. What’s so funny?”

“Just thinking about Josh.”

“Okay.” Dilys giggles like she assumes Faris is thinking about Josh in an entirely different way.

“Not in that way. But it’d be nice to have em here, someone to protect us from our friends at the other table.”

Dilys smiles, the big one that lights her face up more than the city lights or the alcohol ever could. “Our hero-heroine.”

“Swoon,” Faris says, and they let a short chuckle slip out. “So, what were you thinking about just now?”

“What d’you mean?”

“You just looked really peaceful. Like you were deeply lost in thought?”

“I was just thinking this place is really romantic, you know?”

 _Romantic_ is the last word Faris would use to describe the atmosphere of this bar, but they remember just as soon that Dilys barely even knows what fear feels like. They cast a glance out at the shimmering cityscape beyond the edge of the roof, almost peaceful in the night, before they decide that’s definitely them.

“Gonna have to abduct my fiancé to here when we’re back in a few months.”

The rhinestone in her engagement ring glitters when Dilys sips from her drink again, and Faris laughs when she laughs.

“I still can’t believe you’re getting married.”

“I know,” Dilys says back. “I guess we never thought of the engagement being, like, a countdown for anything, _a year of this and then we’re marrying_. It’s more of a commitment thing, just a promise that it’s happening, you know?”

“Still.”

“We’re gonna wait until it’s convenient with the band, obviously. And we did research on surrogacy, so we’ll probably have kids first, too, so they can have a part in it.”

“Reverse shotgun wedding,” Faris quips.

Dilys giggles. “Probably.”

“It’s just mad to think about that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re getting married, and now you’re talking about having kids. That’s mental.”

This time, they instantly question their own word choice. _Mental_ sounds too dramatic for a second, but Faris remembers their reaction when they first got the news much too well. A tranquil silence settles over the table while their words still hang in the air, and they realise they should probably say something else.

“Like, I get it’s what people are starting to do at our age, but I always thought we were above it.”

“Aw, you’re never above being in love,” Dilys says.

She holds her glass out to toast once more, as if to congratulate herself on her words of wisdom, and Faris meets it with their own again. They down a huge swig, even if they’re sure the stink of alcohol wasn’t so prominent before.

Dilys giggles at them, high-pitched and glowy. “Just wondering.” She straightens her skirt, and she asks, “Have you ever thought about it? If you want to marry Rachel?”

“I don’t know,” Faris says, and they don’t know whether the words come out easy or not. Maybe they should drink more to have this conversation. “It’s complicated.”

“Oh. Okay.” Dilys’ reply comes a little too quickly.

“Not in that way.” Faris takes another sip, and they fidget with the stem of their glass. “I do love her, of course, but marriage is… I always thought it was difficult if you’re like me, you know?”

That, and one other reason. They need to shut their brain up for good, but this cocktail alone can only do so much.

“You mean, when you’re non-binary?”

Faris shrugs. “Pretty much. Even with gay weddings, there’s always this weird emphasis on the gender binary, so you always have two brides or two grooms. You never have two people.”

Now their glass is empty. Dilys’ drink still has an inch or so of red sloshing at the bottom when she fidgets with it, so there’s no hope she’ll order a second round just yet.

“And I know Rachel respects me, but she’ll probably still want to get married in a church, so we haven’t really brought up the topic yet.”

“Fair.” Dilys smiles, the bright thousand-watt one, but even with the booze it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “I mean, there’s probably ways to go around it, so you could have a whole gender-neutral wedding, or…” She pauses to take a final long sip from her drink, and she adds, “Or you could probably just get married to Josh instead.”

“Probably.” Faris finally lets a smile slip back onto their face, and they hope it looks genuine. “I’m not sure if me and Josh have the type of relationship where you marry each other.”

“You don’t?” Dilys asks, and that same giggle returns into her voice. “I’ve literally heard you talk about wanting children one day.”

“Yeah, maybe. Like… one.” Suddenly aware of the heat rushing back to their face, Faris turns to look out at the skyline once more. “But we haven’t really talked about it since then, and our relationship’s complicated as it is.”

“Complicated,” Dilys repeats, but her voice hasn’t changed. She looks at her glass again, like she only now realises it’s empty, and she says, “I’ll get us more drinks.”

*

Faris wakes up too early in the morning, although after the twelve-hour flight no amount of sleep could possibly be enough. Their thumb slips on the phone’s screen when they disable the blaring alarm, but they have to get up to piss and take their meds as it is.

Normally when they’re on tour, Joe and Dilys share one room and Tom and Josh share another. Faris gets the lone single, although Josh invites emself over often enough, a tradition the band established their first time on tour not in a shitty van. When Faris wanders back in from the ensuite, they once again dread that they had to change it up for this trip. Yesterday, the receptionist informed them in broken English that there was an error with the reservation so they’re booked into a room with two single beds, and she asked whether they’d like to change to a double-bed couple room instead. Obviously, they declined, but Faris’ stomach turns with more than the hangover when they perch on the edge of Dilys’ bed now.

Dilys twists and stirs in the tangled sheets when the mattress dips in, and a noise of discontent slips past her lips. Faris has to try very hard to stifle a chuckle from a deeply-ingrained _Schadenfreude_ at the misfortune of their hungover bandmates.

“Wake up, you sleepyhead,” they say, sing-song in their voice.

Between the two of them, Faris always figured Dilys would be the morning person, but she now pulls the covers more tightly around herself and buries her head in the pillows. Of course she didn’t set an alarm.

“Leave me alone,” she drawls out.

Once again, Faris bites back their laugh. “Had too much to drink last night?”

Dilys makes a disgruntled noise of agreement. “It's way too… way too bright in here.”

The sunlight streaming in makes a perfect rectangle around her bed. Faris squints at it, but there’s no drapes or blinds in this room, so all they can do is shrug. “I'm sorry.”

“Make it stop.”

“Dilys,” they say and drawl it out the same way that she drawls her words. “We've got our first interview lined up in two hours.”

That finally rouses a real reaction out of her. Dilys exclaims a dramatic, “Fuck off,” and her hand sticks its two fingers up. “That’s not real.”

“It’s an unfortunate fact of life,” Faris deadpans. “I’m gonna make us tea if you’re up.”

At least their room comes with its own kettle, and Faris now fills it with water from one of the complimentary bottles. Behind them, Dilys unravels and sits up, and they realise from the corner of their eye that she doesn’t keep the sheets close to her chest. She sleeps in her underwear, Faris knows that, and they also know she never wears a bra anymore. Not that she’s got a real reason to change her habits, but Faris isn’t sure they should look when she climbs from the bed.

“I’m going shower,” Dilys announces, voice deep with last night. “I feel like death and I’m disgusting.”

She rummages around the room in her knickers, and Faris busies themself with unwrapping the teabags and pouring two things of creamer into one of the teacups. No sugarcubes in this room, but tiny paper bags, which they divide equally between both mugs. Dilys turns on the showerhead in the next room over just when the kettle finishes boiling.

While they wait for the tea to steep, Faris sits at the foot of the bed, and they open their sketchbook to a pattern of circles they started working on over the flight. Even with their back to the window, the room is still too bright, and they tell themself it’s because of that their pen slips unfocussed across the paper. Maybe their hangover’s worse than they thought.

Circles, bubbles, Faris listens to the sound of water coming from the ensuite and immediately wants to plug their ears. For a second, they wonder if Dilys misses Joe the same way they miss Josh, but then, they’re completely sure that she does. Of course, Dilys and Joe would’ve changed their reservation to the couple room. They’d probably be still in their double bed if they were on this trip together, and Faris hates the realisation that they can picture it perfectly.

Maybe their tea is ready by now, so Faris fishes the teabag out by its string and places it on the saucer. When they raise the cup to their mouth, it’s still too hot to drink, but the burn at least wakes them up. Despite the ache, they realise they didn’t add enough sugar, and taking a second sip of the tea, and then a third, doesn’t at all help with the bitterness. Faris hates metaphors.

By the time Dilys walks back into the room with a fluffy towel on her head, most of their cup is gone. She’s mostly dressed this time around, with only her oversized black blouse hanging unbuttoned around her torso. Faris doesn’t see the point in turning away this time.

“Hey,” Dilys says when she tosses the towel onto the empty bed. “How’s your tea?”

“Minging,” Faris says back, but they take another sip either way. “Borderline undrinkable.”

“Fantastic.” Dilys does the first button of her blouse up, and she goes looking for something in her suitcase once more. “Do you think we’ve got time for hotel breakfast?”

“Don’t think so.”

Dilys curses under her breath when she plugs the hairdryer in. They’re supposed to leave at ten, and Faris doesn’t even know exactly what time it is now. Before they stand up, they down the last of their tea.

“I’ll go shower now.”

Their bathroom’s got a shower stall on one side and a large mirror spanning the other. The glass is still fogged up with steam, but Faris smears one hand across it to see their reflection. Maybe it’s the alcohol, or maybe the flight has caught up with them, but they look much more washed-out than they did earlier. They stare at themself for a second when they remove the hotel toothbrush from its plastic wrap.

Faris knows what people think, of course, from too many strangers who felt the need to tell them about it, that they look like a strange cartoon character more than a real person. Right now, as they brush their teeth to get rid of the stale taste in their mouth, they see it, but in a much more grotesque way. Under the fluorescent light, their skin looks too pallid and papery, marred by their dark circles and the old cuts beneath the seam of their shorts. Two little circular burn marks are still healing up on their arm, and the discolouration jumps out at them like an itch. Faris spits, and the sketchy caricature in the mirror does, too.

Their skin feels as foreign as it looks when they pull off their shirt and pants and step into the shower. Faris comes from a family of tall lanky men, so they didn’t expect to become anything else when they grew up, but that doesn’t make them feel like any less of a freak when they bend their knees just to fit under the showerhead. They adjust the water to trickle out at a fraction of the full blast, a gentle rain to soothe their aching bones and head and nerves. When they soap themself up with the sample-size bar of soap that comes with the room, their hands seem much too big, the same way every part of their body is too big.

By contrast, Dilys is the perfect size. She’s tall for a girl, but not to a freakish extent, and a completely normal height for a guy. Every part of her is the right shape, delicate and gently curved, but so subtle she needs to merely slip on a loose jacket to become completely sexless the way Faris can only dream of being. Even her face is the right balance of slopes and angles, and they force themself to think about that when they wash what’s between their legs.

Of course, the nausea creeps back into Faris’ belly when they realise how fucked up that train of thought is. When they rinse the conditioner from their hair, they remember what she said last night after she realised they were being watched, or the question she sometimes asks when she’s doing her makeup, “Do I look like a man?”

But she doesn’t, she never does. All the scar tissue itches when Faris turns the shower up higher, and they let the hot water rattle down onto their head.

*

The day passes easily enough. They’re slightly too late when they walk down to get the van from the hotel. Dilys makes up an apology to the driver, and Faris leans in and whispers, “Dysphoria hell,” and she gives them a long look of understanding.

They have several print interviews with accompanying photoshoots lined up for today, but Faris doesn’t feel too nervous when they go over their schedule on the ride to the first one. Print interviews are easy, and so is standing on bridges and in gardens for the camera. They pop into a sushi place for lunch, and once the day is wrapped up, they’re both too tired to go out, so they grab a bottle of wine and takeaway dumplings to eat in their hotel room instead. Dilys plays music on her MacBook, and they both fall asleep too late, but in any case, Faris doesn’t find time to think back to the morning or the night before.

On the second day, they actually have time for the hotel’s breakfast buffet. Once again, their schedule is packed, yet more print interviews and photoshoots, but Faris again isn’t too worried about that. But even as they spend the morning posing in front of blank walls in an artistic concept they don’t understand, they already dread the sole video interview scheduled for after their lunch break.

Faris hates being filmed even more than they hate having their photo taken. They always feel that the lens of the video camera flattens them into a caricature of themself, a mumbling introvert who hides behind a massive fringe, which technically isn’t much of an exaggeration. Still, viewed through someone else’s eyes their movements and expressions stutter like an automaton, a primitive android that speaks in a fake voice at the push of a button. Faris thinks of the uncanny valley, the primal fear of anything that seems to be human but clearly isn’t, and… they’re back to the self-loathing.

At least, they get to wear sunglasses for the filming and the accompanying pictures for the website, at least. Today’s pair is deep black, something they picked up at a Shibuya shop the day before that resembles goggles more closely than actual glasses. When they ask if it’s okay, Dilys turns on her brightest smile and lies, “Bad hangover,” so at least Faris has that to shield themself away from the camera’s big greedy eye.

Doing promo is their least favourite part of being in a band by far. They never had to dodge an off-script question about whether Dilys still had her penis in Japan, but that’s only a small comfort when all the interviewers today have asked the same questions over and over.

Faris hates filming interviews with Dilys in particular because her bubbly personality makes such a huge contrast to theirs. Dilys loves the camera and the sound of her own voice, and Faris guesses that’s better than having the bulk of attention focussed onto them, but it nevertheless makes them look much worse by comparison.

Maybe midway through the interview, the interviewer turns to Faris and brings up the inescapable question about dealing with the lack of space in Japan as a tall person, and they’re sure they were asked that every previous time they came here, too. Promo season is just the same questions asked over and over again.

When they’re done mumbling their response, Dilys turns around to say, “You know.”

Faris’ eyes are still hidden by the goggles when they turn so she can’t possibly notice the glance they shoot her. From her tone, Faris is sure that no matter what she’ll say next, it’ll come out of left field to fluster them in front of the camera.

Dilys doesn’t disappoint. “I was thinking about you last night, actually.

In the split second before she continues speaking, a fat sting rockets all the way through Faris’ guts up to their heart and into their throat. Of course, they know she only tries to wind them up, but it doesn’t stop the strange ache from cinching their neck.

“'cause I was realising my feet were hanging off the bed a bit, so I was thinking, if my feet are hanging off the bed, then yours must be hanging off the bed a lot more.”

Faris hates her for doing this, and they hate themself an infinitesimal times more because she can’t even know what exactly she’s doing.

With their expressionless sunglasses on, in their inflectionless voice, they reply, “Well, I sleep curled into a ball, so.”

“Oh, okay.”

Dilys throws her head back to cackle, and Faris can’t force a feigned laugh in response. In the pit of their gut, the nasty feelings tangle into a knot and settle to fester, and they’re grateful when the interviewer asks the next boring question.

*

They get the flight back to London at eleven-thirty in the morning, so for their last night in the city, Dilys pesters Faris to take her out one more time. They eventually relent, since they’ve got more than enough reason to drown themself in sake after that interview, even if she insists they should go to the bar with the skyline once again.

Right now, the sun is setting, and the skyscrapers glitter orange and purple across from the rooftop terrace. Yellow marquises fan out above the tables since the dark hasn’t settled, so everything in the soft dusky light turns even softer. The food they serve here is all bourgeois exotic combinations, but Dilys does the ordering with a smile, starters and grilled swordfish as the main for both of them, and more grapefruit mojitos.

“Since we don’t have to worry about money,” she says to Faris when she turns towards them.

Their server tonight is a white girl with a southern twang, definitely living or studying abroad. She gives them both a broad American smile before she asks, “Oh, are you two on your honeymoon?”

Dilys smiles right back at her, even brighter and wider even though she shakes her head. “No, we’re not, we’re in a band. We’re here to do promo, so our label’s paying for our expenses.”

“I mean, that doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

Dilys laughs, and Faris forces themself to join in, but they can’t make it sound genuine to even their own ears.

“No, we’re… I’ve got a boyfriend at home, so. But I love this place, I’m definitely bringing him here the next time we’re in Japan.”

Dilys loves small talk, and the waitress latches right onto it. Faris, by contrast, hates small talk, so they shut their ears and turn their eyes towards the view to ignore both girls chatting over each other.

“All right,” Dilys says somewhere in the distance. “Thank you.”

Finally, Faris tunes back in. “So?” they ask when the waitress has walked from the table.

“She said our salads will be here in fifteen-twenty minutes.” Dilys smiles once again, and she asks, “You know what I just realised?”

“What?”

Her eyes very suddenly blow wide. “We forgot to go to Tower Records.”

“Oh, no.” They made it a tradition as a band to visit the shop when in Tokyo very early on, and with the sincerity that Dilys says it, Faris feels a grave severity in the pit of their stomach. “We did.”

Dilys is wearing the same sleeveless black dress she did last night, but her shrug slipped down her arms so the milky white skin of her shoulders and cleavage glows in the light. In the contrast of purple dusky sky and the yellow through the sunsail, she almost looks like a marble statue, but much more human, like an actual work of art instead of a strange ink scribble.

“We’ll have to remember to go next time.”

“I don’t think we could completely forget about it,” Faris replies.

Once again, that guilty fucked-up jealousy sits on their back, and they will their hardest to ignore it when Dilys pulls them into a conversation.

“Maybe we’ll be less busy next time, hopefully.”

After what seems like less than twenty minutes, their salads arrive. They eat in silence, save for the occasional comment on the food, and it’s the same over again for the main course. The fish is tender and richly seasoned, the cocktail just as bittersweet as it was the first night, and Faris relaxes into their chair. Once their plates are empty and the waitress returns to take them away, she asks Dilys if they’d like dessert.

“No, thanks, cheers. Just two more grapefruit Mojitos, please.”

They clink the glasses together once again when their drinks arrive, but Faris can't focus entirely, so some of theirs spills past the rim and onto the ring of their fingers.

“Whoa.”

“It's fine, it's fine,” Dilys says back, giggly with more than just her natural spunk even though she only had one drink. “Brings good fortune.”

Faris chuckles back. “If you say so.”

She only smirks at them with her air of cockiness, a look that says she’s that much wiser and understands the world that much better. Faris thought that same thing about her when they first met, and still, they feel she’s entirely correct.

“Let's do another toast,” Dilys says and moves her glass forward across the table. Some of her drink spills out as well, now, and she laughs.

“Good fortune,” Faris echoes.

“Yeah.,” she says, and her smile turns quiet and humble. “You go first.”

“With what?”

“With the toast.”

“Right.” Once again, Faris doesn't know what to say. “To Japan, and The Horrors.”

“To our fake honeymoon.”

Dilys laughs just before they clank their glasses together and take a big sip each, and Faris automatically joins in. The rum and the grapefruit burn in their throat going down, and so does the realisation after they set the glass back onto the tabletop.

“I've got a question.”

“Shoot.”

Dilys leans back in her chair like she did the other night, so all her bare skin is spread out as a canvas for the glow from the skyline. Faris doesn't deserve to look at her.

“D'you actually think this is funny? The whole honeymoon thing?”

Dilys realises it was a serious question approximately half a second too late, when she has to choke down the laugh that already begun to erupt out of her mouth. She says, “I mean,” and, “Of _course_ I think it's funny on some level, but…”

“ _But_ , what?” Faris asks. They make an effort to keep their voice even and not seem angry, even if they’re more confused than anything else. Either way, their voice tries to go up and loud over those two words, maybe with the realisation they said to much..

“But I mainly think it's nice, you know, flattering? Having people think we're a cute couple.” She sounds like an excited school girl when she says it. “And having people think I've got a tall, dark and handsome datefriend.”

Faris has no idea how to feel about that.

“Why're you asking?”

“Well, I don't really think it's funny at all,” Faris says. “It mainly makes me really uncomfortable.”

“Oh,” Dilys says. “I'm sorry. Is this like… is it, you know, an _ace_ thing?” She quirks her brow just before her eyes go wide. “'cause I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, you know I wouldn’t do that on purpose, you should've just said, I won't do it again…”

Her ramble goes all the way off into a completely different direction, so Faris can't do anything but shut her up by raising the palm of their hand.

“No. Dilys, no.”

To their own surprise, she stops dead at that second. Her eyes still look a little too wide when they zero in on them.

“It's not an ace thing, it's…” Faris forcibly bites their own tongue to help focus, and they choke back a hiss of pain. At least, they manage to get those stupid words out of their mouth. “I've been in love with you more or less since we met, you know?”

Now, the words are out.

Even Faris themself is concerned when Dilys' eyes pop open wider, an expression that's clearly more than just surprise. Their first instinct response, naturally, is to throw up their hand once more.

“Don't freak out,” they insist.

The air around the table has suddenly taken on a surreal flicker. Faris only feels mild relief when they realise they’re not physically shaken.

“At first it was just a stupid crush, obviously. An infatuation. But then it didn't stop, so I told myself I wasn't going to act on it, since you had a boyfriend and I didn't want to come between that. Since you two weren't open in that aspect.”

The fuzz from the atmosphere fills their mouth. Faris doesn’t bring their eyes back to meet Dilys’ just yet.

“I pretty much gave up on it when I realised I was ace, since obviously sex would've been the only kind of relationship we could've had, and then I gave it up all over again after I realised I wasn't even a man, I wasn't even the right gender to be with you. But…”

Now it's Dilys who repeats, “But.”

“But the problem is I can't just turn it off,” Faris says. “I know I can't have it, and I'm not trying to change anything about that, but I can't stop wanting it… It's complicated.”

Finally, they look back at Dilys, who seems concerned but not completely repulsed by what she just heard.

“I was so sure you figured it out by now.”

“No,” Dilys says. “I had genuinely no idea.”

She blinks, eyes dark and big in contrast to her pale face. A little, she looks like a ghost, only illusion but not an actual corporeal being, and not in a _trans_ sense, either. Faris hates metaphors.

Dilys sips her drink and asks, “Did you tell anyone else?”

“Joe was the first person to really figure it out.” Faris shrugs. “He confronted me about it, one night I was staying at your flat, he just figured it out by himself, just by watching. I thought he might have told you about it.”

“No. He didn't.”

Joe really, truly is a good person, and Faris immediately realises this isn’t the right time for them to realise that. Maybe they shouldn’t mention at this moment that they specifically asked him not to tell her.

“Josh knows, obviously. Ey just asked about it and I said the truth, so.” Faris doesn't know where to take this conversation, so they just continue answering Dilys' previous question. They begin to question whether she truly wanted an answer, though. “Rachel knows. She had to know at some point, she's okay with it, I guess, I mean…”

They don't know what their words are doing anymore, stumbling out from their mouth and over each other in the least elegant way. Time to take a deep breath.

“It’s complicated to begin with when you’re in a relationship and one of you is ace and the other’s not, obviously. When you’ve got different needs. But it’s… in any case, we got past that so we could get past _that_ , too. It’s just a matter of two different things, ‘cause what I’ve got with her is real, and this is purely hypothetical, so.”

Faris looks down at the table between the two of them, since they once again lost the nerve to look at Dilys directly. They reach for their drink only to hold it and feel the cool glass against where their palms feel much too hot.

“I don’t think Tom knows,” they add, as if that could possibly soften the blow. To the dark wood of the tabletop, they say, “I suppose that’s my answer to your question.”

For a long couple of seconds between them, the silence grows. Faris finally raises their head again, if only to look off into the blue distance behind Dilys’ shoulder.

“So I’m the only one who didn’t know,” Dilys finally says.

Her voice is hollow and yet tinged by ache, and so unlike what Faris knows of her. They instantly realise that, at some point, they made a mistake.

“Great.”

“I didn’t want to freak you out, “Faris repeats. “I was just…”

“So you decided to keep it a secret from me.”

Faris can’t place her tone of voice now, but it cuts through their guts and makes them curl in on themselves, so they’re not sure if they want to.

They start with, “I didn’t,” but stop short when they realise they don’t know what they actually want to say.

Faris looks back at her once again, her dark eyes fixed on them with a contempt that goes beyond any look Faris has ever seen on her face before. In the blue light of the evening, her skin looks equally cold, and the guilt Faris feels now is so more corporeal and all-encompassing.

They didn’t think they’d ever ask this question, much less to Dilys. “Do you hate me now?”

Dilys looks away for a long second, first down at her hands on the tabletop and then out onto the cityscape. Faris is almost certain that her answer is going to be _yes_.

“I don’t _hate_ you.”

Their eyes don’t meet when she says it, so Faris doubts that she means it.

“I’m just… feeling a little betrayed, thinking back.” Dilys pauses, as if to find the right words, and she says, “To everything, I guess, that’s happened between us. I feel like I have to reevaluate everything now.”

Faris says, “I’m sorry.”

“You could have just _talked_ to me about it.”

“I’m sorry,” Faris says once again, and they say, “I didn’t…”

“I wasn’t finished.” Dilys folds her arms in front of her chest and adjusts her shrug to cover more of her skin. “Instead of hiding it from me and pretending we were just friends and nothing else. We could’ve just talked it out.”

“I’m sorry,” Faris repeats for the second time now. “I didn’t want to… to make you uncomfortable. Or to ruin your relationship, both with me and with Joe.”

“No, it’s. Look.” Dilys shakes her head. “I love Joe. He’s much more important to me than you could ever be.”

Faris wants to say, _I know_. Objectively, they do know, they’ve known all along, and yet, it stings. They decide to swallow the words down.

“Nothing you could have said would have changed that,” Dilys says, then. “But you would’ve given me clarity.”

She sips her drink and turns her head to the other side, still pointedly avoiding eye contact. Faris doesn’t dare to say anything or even exhale. Their heartbeat feels foreign both with the breath they’re holding and the stress gnawing at it.

“I don’t think it’s too much to ask for honesty in a relationship. In any kind of relationship”

“I’m sorry,” Faris says one more time. “I never meant to _lie_ to you,” they say, but they don’t know how to continue that sentence.

Dilys cuts them off either way. “Well, I still feel betrayed.”

“So you do hate me now.”

“I said I don’t.” She waves over the waitress from across the terrace, and she says, “I just really need some time for myself to think right now.”

“Oh.” Faris says, “Okay.”

Dilys pays the bill and leaves a tip, and she compliments the waitress on the food once more. Then, they both pick up their bags, and Faris pulls on their jacket, ready to leave.

“If you want to go back to the hotel now,” Dilys says, “I’m going to take a walk before I come up.”

“Okay.”

Faris calls a cab as soon as they’re back to street level. They tell the taxi driver they’re not in the mood when he initiates shallow conversation, and they watch the lights of downtown Tokyo pass by the window in silence.

When they get to the hotel, they climb the stairs all the way up to their floor over the lift, not ready yet to face Dilys’ clothes and bags and the scent of her perfume and shampoo. Faris doesn’t bother with stripping beyond their shoes and jacket before they curl into bed, and still, the sheets feel too cold and sterile underneath them. Once again, they wish they could’ve taken Josh on this trip, or maybe, that they stayed home and let Dilys bring Joe instead, anything to avoid this mess. Their skin itches and their stomach aches for reasons that they’re sure aren’t the booze, and the thought of the long journey home looms above.

Faris has never been this fucked in their entire life.


End file.
